ELEANOR HALL: And staying with extreme weather, farmers and volunteer fire-fighters in four states are banding together to try to pressure their governments to authorise more hazard reduction burns.

The lobby groups say that a failure to allow more targeting burning is leading to larger and more intense bushfires.

In Hobart, Felicity Ogilvie reports.

FELICITY OGILVIE: Once again summer brought catastrophic bushfires to Australia. Five Victorians were killed in the worst bushfire season since the Black Saturday fires. In Tasmania 400 buildings were lost.

In New South Wales Coonabarabran farmer Stephen Lill lost more than 200 cows and his prize bull was badly burnt.

STEPHEN LILL: His poor old leg now is giving him problems and while he's recovered from his burns, he looks like a mottled short horn rather than a red Angus. His leg I think is going to preclude him doing his bull type duties.

FELICITY OGILVIE: The bushfire that burnt across Mr Lill's property is subject to a coronial inquiry that's likely to go on for years.

In Tasmania a bushfire inquiry is expected to report in September.

But a Tasmanian farmer, Lindsay White, is already advising his state government on the need to do more targeted fuel reduction burns.

LINDSAY WHITE: I think that probably to get a real outcome, a really good outcome would be to go federal and have all the states agree on an agreed outcome for what we do with our bush.

FELICITY OGILVIE: Mr White has been speaking about the need for hazard reduction burns with likeminded farmers and volunteer fire fighters in Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia.

Roger Underwood chairs the Bushfire front group in Western Australia.

ROGER UNDERWOOD: The bush is just getting so heavy, it's got such heavy fuels the fire-fighters are becoming powerless. So our message has been that there's got to be a lot more work put into preparing the fire grounds and ensuring when bushfires occur that they're not so intense and so damaging.

FELICITY OGILVIE: A scientist who specialises in bushfires, David Bowman from the University of Tasmania, says climate change is also to blame.

DAVID BOWMAN: It's got to be a combination of land management practices and climate effects. It's unrealistic just to attribute it to land management, and I think therein lies the problem that the burning windows, which are available for safe, prescribed burning, because of this increased warming and more severe fire weather, increased frequency, means that it's going to be more difficult to do really large scale burning programs.

FELICITY OGILVIE: A senior fire planner at the Western Australian Department of Environment and Conservation, Roger Armstrong, says a warm spring and autumn has hampered burns.

ROGER ARMSTRONG: We have a nominal target of 200,000 hectares and this year we've only been able to do a little under 20,000, so it's been an extremely bad year for us in terms of getting burns done. But as I say, that's taking advantage of every opportunity that we have.

FELICITY OGILVIE: Peter Robinson from The Wilderness Society in Western Australia says prescribed burning is not the solution to bushfires that it's made out to be

PETER ROBINSON: There is a huge amount of work now that's been published in the literature that's by scientists and others who are experts in this area pointing out different ways that we could protect communities and economic assets more effectively, more safely and without resorting to large scale burning which has so many ecological impacts and harmful impacts.

FELICITY OGILVIE: The farmers and volunteer fire-fighters maintain that the best way to prepare for bushfires is to reduce the fuel load.